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D&D 5E How much healing, how much mitigation for a warlord?

Roughly what % of healing vs mitigation should a warlord have?

  • 100% healing / No mitigation

    Votes: 1 4.2%
  • 80% healing / 20% mitigation

    Votes: 2 8.3%
  • 60% healing / 40% mitigation

    Votes: 3 12.5%
  • 50% healing / 50% mitigation

    Votes: 4 16.7%
  • 40% healing / 60% mitigation

    Votes: 1 4.2%
  • 20% healing / 80% mitigation

    Votes: 5 20.8%
  • no healing / 100% mitigation

    Votes: 8 33.3%

Originally, my point was that I don't care either way because the two are functionally equivalent. Then someone asked if I would be okay with 100% mitigation. I would be okay with that.

I would also be okay with 100% HP recovery. Or any combination of Recovery and Mitigation. Because, frankly, it's like 6 of one and a half dozen of the other.

While it would be nice, as Chris suggests, to have the perfect tool for every situation, if it comes down to it, and healing is the HUGE sticking point of opposition, I have no problem jettisoning healing for robust mitigation.

Would you? If the price of warlord was no HP recovery, would you be willing to pay it? I would, if part of warlord included mitigation.

I wouldn't pay that price, I think they are mostly equivalent, but Mitigation needs more mastery to get the same results. It is more complicated, both on paper -more stuff to keep track of-and on and individual basis. I shouldn't have to belong to the 1% most skilled players to have a warlord that can keep the party going. And one thing almost nobody says is that mitigation greatly slows down play.
 

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Existing support-contributing classes have both, have tremendous flexibility in choosing which to use, and have further flexibility to do blasting, rituals, single-target control, battlefield control, and a host of other things, including shapechanging and turning undead.
All of those are limited.
Unless you want 1/day things, which i don't, then you don't get the same effect.

Balancing the Warlord is going to be a challenge, but not because there's any need to take things away from it to balance it with other support casters. The challenge is, how do you make a class that was so focused on "Leader" support abilities, which now constitute only a fraction of what other former-Leader-role classes now do in 5e, balance with those classes? More battle-field control through tactics? Some single-target control through 'hectoring?' Some improved personal offense via maneuvers? There's a lot of design space out there that the existing martial classes haven't touched, and it's not like 5e has been shy about classes overlapping eachother, either...
IMO: the biggest advantage (and difference) of the warlord is that he's martial. Which (generally) means he's unlimited.

If the warlord was a caster, it would look something like...

Level 1; you can cast level 1 spells at-will.
Level 5: You can cast level 2 spells at-will.
Level 11: You can cast level 3 spell at-will.
Level 17: You can cast level 4 spell at-will.
*(and healing can't be at-will).
 

All of those are limited.
Unless you want 1/day things, which i don't, then you don't get the same effect.

IMO: the biggest advantage (and difference) of the warlord is that he's martial. Which (generally) means he's unlimited.
I know that's kinda the D&D dogma, that you can swing a sword all day (because no rules for fatigue, and we're forgetting things swing back).

Some, probably a fairly small minority, of what the Warlord does might be swinging a sword in this particular way or that, that's as likely to work as any other attack, every time.

Most of the rest is more dramatic, situational, taxing (not necessarily for the Warlord himself), and/or less repeatable.

That can be heavily abstracted as n/encounter, n/rest, n/day, n/level, n/ever or n/whatever - none which would not really be in keeping 5e's greater emphasis on concept (not that that stopped them from giving just about everybody some n/rest deal or other).

*(and healing can't be at-will).

Less abstractly, when a Warlord inspires an ally to do something /more/ than he normally would, that ally is making an extraordinary effort, comparable to the kind of thing only fighters typically do - and you can't do that all day, even in the absence of rules for your sword-arm getting tired. For hp recovery, that can mean triggering HD, 4e-ish though that might feel, and that's pretty reasonable. HD are the hardest to renew resource in the game, recovering only half your HD per long rest (and there are variants to further reduce that) - even 9th level spells aren't so hard to recover! - so that'd be a pretty hard limitation, right there.

For inspiring anything else, you could, again, abstract it down to 1/rest/ally - since most non-fighters aren't normally up for that kinda thing, maybe even 1/long rest. Which is kinda blah, but reasonable. It also means typically only 3-5 times a day, with that not going up particularly with level (parties typically get higher level, not higher membership as the game progresses), so it starts out nice compared to 3 spells/day, but rapidly becomes /more/ limited than spells. In particular, not being able to pile healing spells on a PC who gets particularly picked on in a given battle could be terribly limiting.

There are probably ways around that (the alternative, when faced with a more-limited ability is to make it /more/ powerful). Rather than a hard 1/day, you could have a CON save with increasing DC (and at least some allies' CON saves will improve with level, making it more accessible at higher level), or a penalty like exhaustion or something. Or, a high-level ally might go more times/day, if the warlord was of comparable level. Quite a few possibilities to get the level of limitation into the right ballpark.


Then there's tactics. An obvious idea would be that you can't, for instance, spring the same 'surprise attack' on the same enemy, or even an enemy who saw you do it last time. That does abstract down to 1/encounter, rather neatly, but, again, n/x - blah - plus, what about the ever-popular recurring villain? This one could also go to a saving throw, but instead of an ally /making/ a save so they can benefit from being Inspired again, the enemy makes an INT save to figure out your cunning tactics and negate them (in whole or in part, depending - possibly even making things worse).


Then there's flexibility. What a given Warlord can do with Inspiration is probably pretty set, it depends on his talents and his relationship with his allies. It might eve be ally-by-ally. You can inspire Barg barbarian to attack ferociously (damage buff) with no problem, it's harder to inspire him before battle (temp hps) - that kind of thing - what kind of mechanic that might be IDK, could just be the player of the ally having some input into what kind of buff he wants to use on his character, could be presenting that player with a choice of how to use your inspiration.

Tactics, OTOH, are the kind of thing you have to mix up all the time. You'd want to change up tactics as fast as you could dream them up and drill allies to execute them. Really crazy high-level ones might even get out and become well-known, rendering them virtually worthless beyond an initial use...
 

And if people are asking for opinions (as a poll does), I would suggest instead of making them a healer clone to give them their own niche that is demonstratively mechanically different. Not a drop-in-replacement for a healer, but something that could play nice with a healer in the party if you have one. Maybe go with something like song of rest for out-of-combat healing, and action (proactive) or reaction based mitigation instead of later healing.
You're not going to make a class 'cool' by taking most of it's toys away. While those might be nice additions to differentiate the Warlord, it's hp restoration is already necessarily going to be different from the Cure Wounds and similar spells shared all the existing support characters. Triggering HD, preferable with a bonus to help the party get through the day, is perhaps one of the most often-mentioned possibilities for Inspiring Word.

From the 4e Warlord I played, I was under the impression that healing was only one of it's toys and that it's other specialties for granting actions and buffing were a bigger part of it's makeup. It's healing didn't keep up at all with a cleric who had lots of powers and utilities that granted healing as well. Having a 5e warlord with damage mitigation and then the array of other powers that make a warlord a different Leader than a cleric can easily make a class cool without it also having to try to be all the healer the cleric can be.

If it's as good a healer as a cleric AND it has warlord specific toys it's overpowered. I'd rather give it warlord abilities and some mitigation rather that focus on healing to make a drop in-replacement for a cleric that doesn't change how the party plays out.

A party with a cleric and a party with a warlord should be roughly equal power (in terms of encounters per short rest or day), but should play a lot differently. A warlord party would likely take less damage through direct mitigation plus warlord abilities to help the party succeed faster, but have less healing to deal with it.
 

They're functionally equivalent. Not identical. I never claimed they were identical.

I feel like you've got me chasing my tail splitting hairs here. Jaysus.

Except we were pointing out why they aren't functionally equivalent. Why healing is so much more efficient than any other option available.

From the 4e Warlord I played, I was under the impression that healing was only one of it's toys and that it's other specialties for granting actions and buffing were a bigger part of it's makeup.

Hit point recovery is only one of its toys and not one of its major toys, but it's an essential part of its toys even if it isn't that good at it. Basically you need to be able to cope when the dice turn. But the idea that you need to be as good a healer as the cleric is a strawman.

That said:
If it's as good a healer as a cleric AND it has warlord specific toys it's overpowered.

The cleric is, by definition, as good a healer as a cleric and has cleric specific toys that aren't healing. Is the cleric overpowered? (I will accept yes as an answer).

A party with a cleric and a party with a warlord should be roughly equal power (in terms of encounters per short rest or day), but should play a lot differently. A warlord party would likely take less damage through direct mitigation plus warlord abilities to help the party succeed faster, but have less healing to deal with it.

And I think this is consensus from almost all the pro-warlord camp. The problem is that the warlord shouldn't have no healing at all.
 



So the only toys the warlord shouldn't have are obscure things no one has heard of? Telling, dontchathink?

Edit: Which just gave me an idea. Given all the talk about how bad the name, Warlord, is lately, what about this instead: "Kitchen Sinker".
 
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The problem is that the warlord shouldn't have no healing at all.

Why? I'm not trying to be a smart-alec, but why is reducing damage taken not a valid replacement for healing? The most HP of healing over the course of an adventuring day come from spending HD. Why can't the warlord be better at reducing/removing that damage but worse at standing up people who have already fallen? Especially since thematically (vs. 4e historically) that seems to be the non-magical niche they would occupy?

I'm not saying not to give them something like song of rest or the Inspiring Leader feat to also help during rests. But why must they heal wounds?

But why MUST the warlord have to have a healing component vs. a damage reduction component? The poll has no healing at all as the most answered response, double the next highest which is still 80% mitigation. This seems to be a viable option for other players, what makes it wrong?
 

No. I simply think that your question is a silly one.

The 4e warlord has more toys than the 5e wizard - there are more 4e warlord powers than 5e spells period. It doesn't need most of them. It does however need certain abilities.

It does however need a range of broad capabilities. And until that range of broad capabilities challenges any of the primary spellcasters at all the things they can do (which the Warlord doesn't even come close to doing) it is severe double standards to claim that the request is for too many toys.

Can the cleric do everything requested for the warlord by means of spells? Yes. Can the warlord call down fire from the heavens or cast miracle? No. Therefore calling the warlord the kitchen sinker is utterly risible.
 

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